Researchers have developed a bionic leg that can be controlled by the amputees using their brain.
Zac Vawter, 32, has successfully controlled the movements of his bionic leg with the help of sensors receiving impulses from nerves and muscles that is originally the pathway of signals to our brain. The patient was able to perform simple activities like walking and climbing stairs with his bionic leg – like what a natural leg can do – as a response to his brain signals. More importantly, he was successful in flexing the motorized leg’s ankle, allowing an “almost normal pace” – an ability that is not possible with the past prosthetics.
Vawter, a software engineer from Yelm, Washington, lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident years ago. He was then given the chance to have a bionic leg. He told the Wall Street Journal, "Going upstairs with my normal prosthetic, my sound leg goes up first for every step. With this I go foot-over-foot up the stairs and down the stairs."
According to the researchers, Mr. Vawter is the first ever person who was able to control a prosthetic by brain signals alone.
In experiments involving 700 to 1,000 steps, minor errors like scuffing the foot happened in about two percent of steps with the signals coming from the brain. Aside from that, Vawter didn't have any more serious errors that could have resulted in a fall.
Levi J. Hargrove, a researcher at the Center for Bionic Medicine, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago said, “the current state-of-the-art devices involving both the knee and the ankle require pressing a remote-control button at, say, the bottom of a flight of stairs to rock and kick the leg back to make the step up.”
The device is called “bionic” because of its capability to interact cleverly with humans. Regardless of associations of "bionic" technology with superhuman strength, the prosthetics "don't necessarily need to be strong. The need to be smart," Dr. Hargrove said.
The research was published in the Sept. 25 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.
